Coldwater Revenge, James Ross [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

he was there. I didn’t tell you last night because I only placed the face this morning when you came busting out with your drawers around your knees. The visual must have jarred something.”

Joe shook his head. “You’re a piece of work, Tommy. What makes you think it’s the same guy?”

“The photos on the bookshelf in his office. He kept looking at them. One was himself with a guitar, long hair and a Fu Manchu—Don Juan d’Chemistry, but without the teacher haircut. Same size, same big choppers, only they’re yellow now. I don’t think he was using the name Willow back then, but you could look it up.”

Joe unfolded his arms and relaxed. “Nice detective work, brother.”

“If it’s him. He’s got balls coming back here.”

“Big ones, if it turns out he’s missing a sleeping bag.” Joe slid behind the wheel of the patrol car where the girls were waiting for their ride to school. Bonnie stood at the cabin door and watched her family head down the mountain. Tom joined her. She looked exhausted.

“Sorry for waking everyone.”

Bonnie turned toward him, eyes hard and arms folded tight across her chest. “You have to tell him to quit.”

“Bonnie, it was me who set off those alarms.”

“Three times this month. Every petty criminal in Coldwater knows that Joe’s lost his deputies and has no backup now. They’re testing him.”

“He told me that he’ll have help again in the New Year.”

“Bullshit!” She turned and walked into the house. He followed her into the kitchen to where she stood looking out the window toward the lake. He put a hand on her shoulder. She brushed it away.

“What’s going on, Bonnie?”

Pulling a chair from the kitchen table, she pointed to the one opposite. “Sit. Listen. Then talk to your brother.”

Tom poured a cup of coffee and tried to think of what his brother might have done to require fraternal intervention. The possibilities were endless. He took the chair and waited. “Coldwater is changing,” Bonnie began. “But your brother refuses to recognize it, or do anything to protect himself or us.” Tom wrapped his hand around the cup and concentrated on maintaining eye contact. “The State has all this federal money since 9/11. Supposedly to protect the border. But they’re using it mostly to revisit old battles. They want to roll up all the small town police departments and make them part of the State Troopers.”

Is that what you’re worrying about? “The state troopers have been trying to rein in the small town cops since MadDog’s time. The pitch back then was computers. It’s nothing new.”

“Well they’ve got a better pitch now, and money to go with it. They’re dangling budget relief in front of all the little town governments. And the town council is more than ready to offload any costs the state is willing to pick up.”

Tom put down his cup. “Joining the Troopers might not be the worst thing for Joe. It would mean a bigger paycheck and a state pension. I know my brother values his independence…”

“Oh, Tom, the troopers aren’t going to give Joe a job. They hate his guts. They hate the whole Morgan family!”

Tom looked away. “And you think Coldwater’s going to let Joe go?”

“No one’s delivered a pink slip yet. But the troopers have already lured away Joe’s deputies. The town council took away his dispatcher. The scuttlebutt is they’re waiting for the State to fund a Border Patrol barracks on that vacant lot next to the Grange Hall, so they can put one of Joe’s’ old deputies in charge and have everyone on the state payroll instead of the town’s. Even your mother says that firing Helen, who’d been there thirty years, was the writing on the wall. She says Joe needs to get out before it gets ugly.”

“And do what?”

Bonnie’s eyes brightened. “There’s an opening for a math teacher and football coach at Coldwater High School starting in the spring. Joe would make a great coach, don’t you think?”

No. And imagining Joe as anything other than the Coldwater County Sheriff was like thinking of Tarzan living in Manhattan.

“Have you talked to him?”

“Your mother and I both have. She says it’s like talking to you about grandchildren.”

Ouch. “Look, Bonnie, I’ve been away for a while. Give me a few days to digest the local politics and then I’ll talk to him.”

She reached for his hand. “Don’t put it off, Tom. The longer he waits…” The phone next to the cupboard began to trill, interrupting whatever consequence she’d intended to bring to his attention. She lifted the receiver from the wall. “Yes? No. I would try him at the Grange.. . I really don’t… I’ve given him your messages, Miss Pearce.” She’d slapped the receiver back into place.

“Susan?”

“That woman’s a pain.”

“In pain, I imagine. Her brother just died.”

Bonnie looked away. Her expression was hard and unsympathetic. Tom would have liked to ask why, but could sense this was another no-fly zone. Instead, he said, “I’ll talk to him. And I’m sorry about that Pig Latin stuff with Luke. I wasn’t thinking.”

Her face grew tighter. Then tears fell. Tom looked for a box of tissues or other prop that might substitute for opening his mouth and making things worse. Bonnie raised her head and looked over his shoulder, wiping her eyes with her fingers. Tom turned and saw Luke standing in the doorway, holding a pair of fishing rods.

“Hey, Buddy. They make you catch your breakfast around here?”

“Blueberry Pancakes,” said Bonnie, choking the syllables.

Luke rested the rods against the kitchen island and hopped onto a stool. He looked at the two adults.

Tom grinned. “You ever catch a salmon?”

The boy turned his head from side to side.

“Would you like to?” Tom held his palms a yard apart. “They’re about this big.”

Luke jerked his head up and down.

Tom turned to Bonnie, “Is it okay?”

Her face resumed its mask of worry —- the mom’s version this time, not the wife’s. “That’s a big lake, Tom. Those are huge fish.”

Luke moved his head up